Retro Review: Syndicate

15 Aug 2008 at 13:19:44 by Andy Alderson

The target is somewhere inside the building. There are probably bodyguards, heavily-armed and ready for any kind of assault. It's never easy. We have an agent on each door of the building and they are itching to move, pumping with adrenaline as they ready their weapons. The informant better be right about this. They burst in and open fire with the flame-throwers, laying waste to everyone inside – civilians, the bodyguards, the target. She was the wife of a politician who selfishly refused our courteous requests. Did she deserve to die? Maybe. Morality is flexible. The Syndicate is not.

Bullfrog's 1993 Amiga title, Syndicate, paints a dark picture of the future. As capitalism developed, the multinationals outgrew the governments and nations made way for corporations. Unelected, undemocratic and unwilling to be controlled by the people, the corporations used commerce to rule the world. Until, that is, the European corporation developed the CHIP - a mind-altering implant powerful enough to convince citizens that the world they lived in was not a corrupt, polluted mess. The CHIP was everything a corporation needed for ultimate power and as they battled to monopolise it they were infiltrated by crime syndicates. Thugs took over the boardrooms and now control the corporations and the people. Using teams of ruthless cyborg agents, the rival syndicates seek to spread their influence by eliminating rivals and hunting down traitors.

The player takes on the role of a young executive in a small syndicate looking to make a name for itself. The game world is divided into 50 territories, all under the control of rival syndicates, and the goal is to take them all. To do this, you must send out your team of cyborg agents to do your dirty work for you. The missions in Syndicate basically involve three aspects: assassinating targets, persuading people to join your cause and killing enemy agents. Whilst this does get a little repetitive over the course of the game, the missions vary wildly in both size and complexity. By the time you're half way through the game, the levels are often massive and heavily-populated with enemies looking to make cybernetic mincemeat out of your agents.

Before each mission starts, you must take time to prepare your team. Keeping a strict eye on your budget, you'll need to equip them properly for the task ahead. As well as weapons, you have the option to upgrade your cyborgs in order to make them faster, stronger, more efficient killing machines. However, not all of the equipment is available at the start of the game and you'll need to research new technologies in order to gain access to the best weapons and upgrades. And you will need them.

Once equipped, you can send your agents out into the field. The levels are presented from an isometric viewpoint, and play out as a mixture of real-time-strategy and arcade action. You move your agents by clicking the left mouse button, and shoot with the right. It may sound simple, and it is, but what makes Syndicate involving is the way you get to decide how to approach each task. Do you use one team member, or use them all? Do you use the close-range power of the shotgun or pistol that can be fired from distance? Do you go in all-guns-blazing or draw the target out into an ambush? You can even adjust your agents speed and reactions via the in-mission drugs system (IPA – Intelligence Perception Adrenaline). And, as the enemies become better armed and more difficult to kill, you'll need your agents to be alert. The game gives you freedom to think about how to play it and offers a surprising level of depth.

Syndicate is not without its problems, of course. You can't see inside buildings, you can't divide you team into two man squads and the AI is more than little ropey. The research and territory management systems are also a little underplayed. However, it is a case of the good outweighing the bad.

Context is everything in Syndicate. Bullfrog welded together the cyberpunk influence of William Gibson, the dystopian horror of Brave New World with the visual style of Blade Runner to create something that had simply not been seen in a game before. The world of Syndicate is dark, hopeless and deeply atmospheric and this is complimented perfectly by the violent, amoral gameplay. If it were released today, it would undoubtedly incur the wrath of the Daily Mail and Jack Thompson.

In 2006, ex-Bullfrog man Peter Molyneux talked fondly about the game and how he would like to revisit the franchise. The idea of combining the atmosphere of Syndicate with the capabilities of next-gen machines could make for something very special.

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